‘Suits’ Season 2, Episode 3, ‘Meet the New Boss’: TV Recap

Now that Mike is a hotshot corporate lawyer, he should really find another apartment – preferably one with a well-lit hallway. He realizes someone is inside as he opens the door and I can’t help but wonder if Trevor is lying in wait with a baseball bat. Luckily for Mike, it’s his grandmother, armed only with a few insults for forgetting about their dinner date.

Daniel Hardman is back and threatening to add yet another dimension to the tangled web of power and intrigue at Pearson Hardman. He urges the senior partners to think of him as a seasoned adviser, “like Bill to Hillary, if she’d won,” he says. Perhaps alluding to Bill isn’t the smartest idea since he also had an affair, which gave Jessica and Harvey the leverage to force him out of the firm.

Jessica gives Harvey a client situation to deal with but Daniel insists that he should work on the case since the hospital was originally his client. As usual, the actual client – a hospital with a nursing staff on the verge of a strike – gets lost in the fray. Harvey winds up in Daniel’s office, proclaiming, “I answer to number one.” (Who, if you’ve been keeping track, is not Daniel.)

On the legal front, the lead nurse negotiator rejects Harvey’s proposal for a settlement and says they are financially prepared to strike. She tells Mike: “I used to change bedpans for a living, Junior. I know what bullshit smells like.” Harvey insists on getting an injunction while Mike maintains that a temporary restraining order for the nurses’ strike is a better idea. While you can guess who wins that battle, someone in a more powerful – say, number two – position thinks along the same lines as Mike. Daniel arrives before the scheduled hearing and uses his judicial connections to file a motion for a temporary restraining order behind Harvey’s back.

Tension of the romantic sort is in the air at our favorite law firm, just in time to make this episode resemble, even more closely, the Capulet-Montague feud. Mike avoids Rachel post-breakup. Is it considered a breakup if they never officially started dating? Louis meets his soul mate in a representative from Harvard Law (Sheila Sazs – say it really quickly), who is visiting Pearson Hardman in order to reevaluate its recruiting privileges at the institution. The evaluation is prompted by abysmal rankings in a legal publication, placing the firm in the second-to-last position in its associate training program. Have you noticed how much attention the number two is getting in this episode?

Daniel goes deeper into Harvey’s territory when he summons Mike to his office in order to poach Mike as a back-channel negotiator for the nurses’ strike. We learn that Mike’s grandmother is living in a nursing home run by the hospital represented by Pearson Hardman, which he uses to his advantage in the negotiation. The strategy backfires, however, when the nursing negotiator points out how nurses often work past in their shifts in order to properly care for patients like his grandmother.

Louis manages to impress the Harvard Law representative, who allows Pearson Hardman to retain its recruiting privileges. Bu the moment is bittersweet because she also tells him that his subordinates do not respect him. His subsequent foray into the “bullpen” after hours leads to a tender moment between Harvey and Louis, in which Harvey tells Louis that he’s “the man.”

Confidence boosted after a night out on the town with Donna, Rachel tries to compose her bio for a dating website. Mike comes to the rescue and rattles off a charming ode to Rachel (Oh, Romeo!) that only serves to blur the lines of their relationship even more.

More legal posturing and an eventual Harvey (therefore, Jessica) win. The episode nears its close with a shot of Rachel and an unknown man, who asks her if this is her first time. Uh oh. But as the camera zooms out, we discover that they are in a classroom and the unknown man is referring to the LSATs. The breakup with Mike doesn’t send Rachel into the arms of another man but rather serves as motivation. Will Pearson Hardman lose its best paralegal to law school?

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